The present invention relates to a method and/or architecture for connecting USB devices generally and, more particularly, to a method and/or architecture for fault tolerant connection of USB devices.
Conventional USB peripheral devices can have software crashes that occur for a number of reasons. Such crashes can be catastrophic (e.g., fatal crashes that require shutdown of a program/feature). Such software crashes often require a reset of a processor within the peripheral device to recover. However, a reset portion of the processor of the peripheral device can have difficulty coordinating the reset with an outside system (e.g., pending peripheral device tasks). The reset processor of the peripheral device requires additional awareness and recovery information from host software and/or hardware to correctly reset. One such conventional method for initiating a recovery of a non-functioning USB peripheral device requires a physical disconnection of the peripheral device (e.g., disconnect and reconnect). Another conventional method for initiating a recovery requires a power cycle (e.g., a manual reset) of the host computer. While common in modern computers, particularly windows based systems, such power cycling and disconnecting is inconvenient for the user of the peripheral device and can be detrimental to the computer.
Additionally, conventional USB peripheral devices have high data transfer error rates. The high error rates can make conventional peripheral devices unreliable, inoperative, or unusable.
Conventional USB peripheral devices typically cease to operate upon malfunctions. After such malfunctions proper operation may not be attainable or sustainable, rendering the peripheral device useless. Disabled USB peripheral devices often require an operator to manually intervene. It is generally desirable to provide a method and/or architecture that may provide fault tolerant recovery without user intervention.
One aspect of the present invention concerns an apparatus comprising a circuit that may be configured to present a connection signal. The connection signal may be configured to automatically disconnect and reconnect a peripheral device from a host in response to one or more errors. In another aspect of the present invention the connection signal may be configured to shift a configuration of a peripheral device in response to one or more errors.
The objects, features and advantages of the present invention include providing a method and/or architecture for interfacing a peripheral device to a host that may provide (i) uninterrupted operation of the peripheral device, (ii) reduced and/or negligible downtime, and/or (iii) a simplistic recoverable peripheral design.